The Format War – Who I Think Will Win
September 25th, 2007 at 7:59 PM by Matt Freedman
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or away from electronics, which might as well be under a rock), you’ve probably heard of the great “Format War” going on right now. In one corner, there’s Blu-ray, and in the other, HD DVD.
Both formats are great, and share quite a lot of features, but I think that one will prevail over the other. It is possible that both formats could prevail, but it would be highly inconvenient for consumers.
I think that Blu-ray will win. Why? I have a couple of reasons.
First of all, Blu-ray Discs are capable of storing more data (per layer) than HD DVD Discs. This is a major plus for storing extra long movies, TV series’ seasons, extra content, etc.
Major studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox and Loinsgate exclusively back Blu-ray. Most Blockbuster (one of the largest video/game rental chains in the world) stores also exclusively rent Blu-ray.
I’ve always liked Blu-ray more than HD DVD. I don’t know why (as I’ve never used any of them), but I just think Blu-ray is better.
The best thing would be for the companies behind HD DVD and the companies behind Blu-ray to combine their efforts and just make one High Definition disc format. But, I doubt that’ll be happening…
Who do you think will win, Blu-ray or HD DVD?
WordPress 2.3
September 24th, 2007 at 12:30 PM by Matt Freedman
WordPress 2.3 has been released and includes some major new features!
One of the more popular new features is Tagging. WordPress now allows you to add tags to your posts. Tags are best used in conjunction with Categories, so you can describe a post, without having hundreds of Categories. Tags are also used by services like Technorati. You can learn how to add Tags to your current theme here.
Another awesome new feature is the Update System. WordPress automat(t)ically checks to see if there’s a new version of WordPress and if there’s new version of your Plugins (assuming the Plugin is hosted on WP.org’s Plugin Database) and will let you know. If there’s a new version of WordPress available, it’ll say it somewhere in your Admin panel (if the user logged in has permissions to edit options). If there’s a new version of a Plugin available, it’ll say right under the plugin on your Plugins page.
Some other smaller (but just as cool) features are:
- The default links in the Blogroll are no longer those of the main developers Blogs, they are now useful and relevant to WordPress
- On the dashboard, the Incoming Links are no longer from Technorati, they’re now from Google Blog Search
- There’s been some cool changes to the Permalink system, go can see the changes in the this comment on the Trac ticket. Including enforcing either www. or no www.
- If you change the slug of a post, the old slug will redirect to the new one
- New “Pending Review” Post Status added. Useful for if you have multiple writers on your Blog and you want to review posts before they’re published
- Improved Post and Draft Management (using filters)
Unfortunately, the BrowseHappy logo is still in the Admin panel. Oh, well, maybe in 2.4…
Since there’s been some file reorganizing, you should delete all WordPress files (except the folder and content of wp-content and wp-config.php) and then upload the files for WordPress 2.3. Other than that, the upgrade process is the same as always. Don’t forget to backup your Blog and it’s database before upgrading!
:-) and :-( (Smileys/Emoticons) Turn 25
September 19th, 2007 at 10:30 AM by Matt Freedman:-)The symbols :-) and :-(, which are commonly used in email to convey emotions (thus, being commonly referred to as emoticons), have turned 25 years old today (September 19, 2007)!
Scott Fahlman is credited for coming up with the idea of “smileys” or “emoticons”. On September 19, 1982, he sent an email with the idea, which said this:
So, Happy 25th Birthday, smileys/emoticons! 😀 (or rather :-) )
BlogRush, Free Traffic?
September 16th, 2007 at 5:42 PM by Matt Freedman
A couple of days ago, a new site called BlogRush was launched. BlogRush is a widget that you place on your blog that displays post titles of blogs similar to yours in the category you chose (at sign-up) for your blog to be in.
For each impression where the widget loads (if it’s on every page of your Blog, every hit on your blog) you get a credit for your posts to be displayed throughout the BlogRush network in similar categories. So, if you have a very popular blog, you’ll have your posts show up more often in the network. Essentially, you can get free traffic for just having the widget displayed on your Blog.
I’ve put the widget on my sidebar. Hopefully I’ll see an increase (however slight it may be) in traffic over the next few days.
The BlogRush site currently has no information about itself… Hopefully it will in a couple of days, it’d be nice to get some more information about BlogRush.
Sign-up for BlogRush!
Update: BlogRush no longer exists and the links in this post have been removed.
Adobe Photoshop CS3 for iPhone
September 16th, 2007 at 5:08 PM by Matt FreedmanSweet, finally Photoshop on-the-go! Now I really want an iPhone. 😉 A great parody by the guys over at NAPP!
Enjoy! 😀
